LIVE: Julian Assange arrives in Saipan for his court hearing [Reuters]
Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
871–880 of 1001 posts
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#872Earlier quoted context omitted.
What part of the world is your neighborhood in?
I'm thinking OZ hero implies Australia.
It's actually quite rare for Australians to refer to Australia as Oz, at least in my experience. Seems to be much more a thing in the US and, to a much lesser extent, the UK.
If that graffiti were written in Australia, I think it would be far more likely written as 'Aussie hero'.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#873This is almost bringing me to tears today. I am happy he's finally going to be free but I am still in deep sadness because this is not the world we are supposed to living in. With all of our knowledge and technology we are still doing horrible things as a civilization and we have lost control of our leadership. This scares me a lot because it is a growing problem and every day it seems like humanity is losing more an…
[flagged]
This reads like AI generated rage bait.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#874Paraphrasing Winston Churchill: “You can always trust the Americans to do the right thing, after having exhausted all other options.”
Although often quoted as such, that’s not a Churchill quote. And the original quote itself isn’t actually about America. [1]
[1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternative...
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#875JULIAN ASSANGE IS FREE Julian Assange is free. He left Belmarsh maximum security prison on the morning of 24 June, after having spent 1901 days there. He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stanstead airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK. This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators…
> 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day Why, though? I didn't even think that was a thing in Britain, at least if you're not some very high risk criminal convicted of violent crimes, which I don't think he is? Regardless of what one think about what Assange did that just seems extremely unnecessarily cruel unless he was a threat to guards or other prisoners...
Why? To punish and deter.
He exposed terrible things done by large powers, therefore he was persecuted absolutely.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#876Earlier quoted context omitted.
The entire point was to embarrass the US, not to take some high minded stance. Wikileaks has shown some extreme bias, after refusing to expose dirty secrets of the Kremlin. They are hardly some do-gooder organization. If it came out in 15 years that wikileaks was Russian funded, I would not be surprised. Spreading false rumors and misinformation, failure/refusal to fact check sources, anti-semitism, possibly editing…
This fact isn’t stated often enough. Not to mention the usually cited helicopter video is highly edited and anything but impartial, with an American Bradley fighting vehicle under ambush a block away as can be heard in the audio. And I can’t fathom why a journalist, accompanied by men with AK’s themselves, would be pointing what obviously looks like an RPG from a distance at troops in a firefight- not to mention brin…
It wasn't the worst that was found but it did show a war crime. It wasn't the only one by any stretch.
It showed a cover up of the number of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan which had been caused by American Troops.
It showed significant horrific human rights violations against innocent and untried inmates at Guantanamo Bay. (As if just the existance of that wasn't enough.)
It showed illegal spying by the NSA on governments around the world.
Plenty of good done by wikileaks.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#877Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 2x3 metre cell, isolated 23 hours a day Why, though? I didn't even think that was a thing in Britain, at least if you're not some very high risk criminal convicted of violent crimes, which I don't think he is? Regardless of what one think about what Assange did that just seems extremely unnecessarily cruel unless he was a threat to guards or other prisoners...
Why? To punish and deter. He exposed terrible things done by large powers, therefore he was persecuted absolutely.
Sure that's obvious (or not... depending on one's political views), but there must be some legal justification. Or can they put someone in permanent solitary confinement without giving any reason at all in Britain?
I'm reading at some sites that this isn't really true and that he wasn't literally held in a 2x3m cell for 23 hours every day. Although it's not very clear what were the actual conditions.
edit: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/11/un-expert-to.... it's very vague and unspecific though..
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#878The whole saga is an interesting lesson in how a noble cause can end up helping anti-democratic forces. Assange gave the public invaluable information that would not have been know otherwise, but he ended up playing right into the hands of the people who wanted to discredit Clinton. Politics is complicated.
Anyone else remember when wikileaks directly collaborated with the trump campaign, gave them advice, etc.? https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/14/563996442...
Also interesting that they didn't Wikileak these messages, some mainstream journalist had to do it for them. Probably they just hadn't gotten around to it
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#879Earlier quoted context omitted.
But of course it is positive. This is a huge deal, even if only one that will benefit himself. I don’t know anything about any secrets that he showed any lack of regard for, but I definitely know about the files he exposed that showed the US government is a bunch of cowards who manipulate people and then use the full force of the law to defend themselves when caught with their pants down. Instead of making people gue…
The US government needs to prosecute actors who infiltrate secure systems with the aim to leak state secrets as a way to prevent this type of behavior from happening in the future. Say what you want; even if the premise of leaking is seeking to enrich the interests of the public--there are many state secrets that are secret for very good reasons, such as protecting the lives of informants, diplomats, etc. There were…
That information has been leaked and has the US been any less safe because of it. I would argue there is nothing to suggest it. Governments aren't above the law and the journalists that were killed and the spying was rightfully publicised. As was the Guantanamo Bay leaks. The public shouldn't know everything but if the public find out because the government act illegally and need to be held to law like anyone else, it is an unlucky consequence of the governments actions.
Re: Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with the U.S., allowing him to go free
#880Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being free is so overwhelmingly positive? Assange certainly did great work to reveal government corruption and abuses of power. At the same time, some state secrets are best kept secret for national interests and Assange seemed to show a lack of regard for protecting this type of information. It often seemed that he was working in his own self interest rather tha…
> Is anyone else here surprised that the reaction to him being free is so overwhelmingly positive? Not really, though I am frustrated as it does feel like he's only popular because he's an underdog sticking it to The Man. Even in isolation and ignoring the preceding case — for which he fled to the embassy in order to not risk the very outcome he's now facing (c.f. going to the USA, "Assange would appear in court in t…
There's a pretty big difference in breaking the law to get hot goss vs breaking the law to expose corruption at the highest levels of government.
There's limits of course, but whistleblowers should be afforded a lot of leeway, particularly because quite often doing things the "right way" is engineered to accomplish nothing.